What criteria must we meet in order to be considered human? Must we be creatures of flesh and blood, bone and organ, intelligence and wit? Must we adhere to the path laid down for us by evolution, or can we still be considered part of the species if we use science to accelerate our genetic development? For us, such questions remain in the realm of the arbitrary, providing more nourishment to philosophers than to the people. And yet we may soon reach the point at which science has sufficiently advanced to eliminate death and disease, hunger and heartbreak. Will it still be trivial when we intersect with this future and are forced to weigh how much of what makes us human we are willing to sacrifice in order to attain our place among the stars? What will come of us when our society is overtaken by these technologies? Will there be any going back? Mr. Rajaniemi ruminates in his challenging and exciting novel.
The third millennium is halfway over and humanity is utterly unrecognizable as the species that so long ago feared for its survival on the plains of Africa. Having undergone a quantum revolution that has opened the door to unimaginable technologies, humans have digitized their minds, uploading their souls to unspeakably powerful systems as a means of achieving both enlightenment and immortality. When they have need of flesh and blood, they have merely to create a body from various forms of intelligent matter, swelling themselves with awesome augmentations that span the spectrum from the incredible to the exotic. But though this expansion of known science has pushed humanity through the resource bottleneck that for so long hampered the species, it has not eliminated the need for power which continues to fuel the tides of war.
Fought out between individualists and collectivists, between posthumans who wanted to maintain the sanctity of their own minds and posthumans who continue to seek a single, organized metaconsciousness that will collaborate in the exploration and the conquest of the known galaxy, the protocol War devastated the solar system and, worse, failed to yield up a clear victor in this battle of technologies and ideologies. The result, then, is a glacial peace that could turn into a hot war at any moment if the soboronost have their way. For driven by their mission to curate every human mind in the solar system, these collectivists will stop at nothing to wipe out the last measure of individualist resistance which has coalesced on Mars in glorious, floating cities that are constantly on the move, avoiding Soboronost threats.
Into this toxic stew is dropped Jean le Flambeur, a legendary thief who, unexpectedly, is liberated from his long stay in a horrific virtual reality prison in which he's forced to play the same treacherous game on an infinite, punitive loop. Sprung by an agent of one of the seven Soboronost Founders who requires Flambeur's unique skillset to steal something of vital importance to her, he must first retrieve memories he's hidden even from himself before he can be of any use to the vicious and manipulative Founder. Minded by Mieli, the Founder's winged agent and a warrior with individualist sympathies, Flambeur returns to the scene of one of his many crimes, the free cities on Mars where reassembling his past will mean reintroducing himself to the people he harmed and abandoned 20 years ago. Will Flambeur betray them once more, or will revenge prompt them to turn the tables on their old friend and give him some of his own treacherous medicine?
The Quantum Thief is exceptional science fiction. Harnessing the cynicism and the wit of Iain Banks and the hard science of Alastair Reynolds, Mr. Rajaniemi has established, with but one book, a place for himself among the greats of the genre. For in all of its imaginative force, this first entry in a proposed trilogy is as fantastically plotted as it is concisely told. From the philosophy of humanism to the quantum technologies of the far future, the author hardly even needs a plot, so vivid is his world of demons and power plays, angels and dominance.
Mr. Rajaniemi's tale is energized by two sizeable gambles, both of which pay off in spectacular fashion. Firstly, he bets on the intelligence of his readers to suss out for themselves the intricacies of tech and plot that underpin the novel. In this, he follows in the hallowed footsteps of giants like William Gibson who refused to break character to explain even the most trivial elements of their glittering mindspaces, requiring the reader to mentally and emotionally engage on a level far more profound than the relatively shallow playgrounds in which most fiction cavorts. Secondly, at no time does he allow us to rest from an assault of ideas and concepts that are hurled at at us with ballistic force. Mr. Rajaniemi not only demands that his readers come to grips with the death of humanity as a biological species, he envisions a future Internet based on publicly accessible memories that, should it come into being, will forever transform communication and socialization far past the point of recognition. Under other circumstances, this intellectual denseness might be bothersome, but in the author's skillful hands such revelations merely add to the complexity of the world, opening up new vistas to be considered and pulled apart.
There is, unquestionably, a steep learning curve for The Quantum Thief. But while the reader is adjusting to a world of exotic matter and stolen minds, MMORPG guilds and terrifying war machines, he's being subjected to a steady supply of wit and charm that pull him down into the story until, slowly, inevitably, it clicks into place. A truly remarkable first effort and, even without the science and the factional fighting, a memorable mystery. One of my favorite reads this year... (5/5 Stars)
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